


On Their Side

by ViridianPanther



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: British Politics, Gen, Modern Era, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Shopping, The Old Guard buy clothes from an old woman in a charity shop, and Joe and Nicky drink espresso, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridianPanther/pseuds/ViridianPanther
Summary: Pam Marks is surprised and delighted when four young (looking) people make a big purchase at her Help the Refugees charity shop in suburban England. The political winds and the recession are catching up with her. She's glad to know there are people on her side.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 143
Kudos: 686





	On Their Side

There’s something that doesn’t quite click for Pamela Marks the moment these four people step through the door of the _Help the Refugees_ charity shop in Hitchin.

They are about as different from the shop’s regulars as you can get. There’s a few students, a few environmentally-conscious forty somethings with ruddy skin and long hair, but Pam knows from her staff training, and from her seven years of part-time work here, that most people who come through the doors of this charity shop are like her: over sixty, retired, coming here because they can’t afford to live too comfortably on a meagre pension, and modern fashion is a bit rubbish anyway. Occasionally, you’ll find something that’s been in someone’s wardrobe for decades until they either (a) did a Marie Kondo on their life, or (b) died. People in Pam’s age group like this, because it means they can pop on that cream-coloured cable knit sweater and pleated skirt and imagine they’re a young, effortlessly cool Sloane Ranger from 1983 all over again.

Pam doesn’t suppose she can complain. They keep a steady, albeit declining, trickle of money coming through the door. The meagre pay is enough, once the train fare from Baldock comes out, to keep Pam’s heating on and her cat Yusuf fed. And the remaining sliver of profit, while not much, is enough to keep the _Help the Refugees_ helpline ticking over.

This is why Pam, after a jolt of surprise, lets out a delighted smile, and calls out “welcome!” when these four people enter, looking as if they’ve come straight off an assault course.

The accents are what catches her attention to begin with. The short, black girl who comes in first and gives Pam a nod of acknowledgment is American—maybe from Ohio, or Chicago? The brown-skinned man with the curly hair mumbles in something that might be American, or might equally be Dutch. The pale-skinned guy sounds like he _could_ be French. The short-haired white lady is keeping her mouth shut.

They are also all a few decades too young to fit her usual customer segment. Or rather, they look like they are. Pam assumes they must be students.

(She can’t see any of their faces. All of them are wearing crisp face coverings and disposable gloves. Much better than many of Pam’s regulars, in fact. There’s still that man who brings his grandchildren in and steadfastly refuses to wear a mask as he does so, even when he has a hacking cough, which is more often than not with his smoking habit.)

Pam is glad for something else to give her attention to. She’s spent the morning reading the _Help the Refugees_ newsletter on the ancient laptop behind the counter, and it’s just making her angry. **Demand action on far-right vigilante groups. Two boats sunk in Channel: 13 dead, including 4 children. Sign our petition to the UK Government today.**

And yes. She should get angry about this stuff. She’s already signed the petition, and sent it to her daughter. (Jodie will sign it, of course. She doesn’t exactly have much else to do, not since the pharmaceutical company she worked the reception desk for suddenly went under, after _that_ incident with the private security team on Fetter Lane back in March. Of course, that meant she was made redundant _before_ Covid and the furlough scheme. Sometimes Pam thinks that Saturday afternoon when Jodie had called her, panicked, from the police station, was the turning point. The epoch when life for her and her family truly turned to shit this year.)

So there’s something therapeutic, almost, about sitting behind the desk, listening, people-watching. It’s a nice distraction from a world that is slowly turning itself inside out. Usually the arguments are about clothes sizes. Usually the only language is English. Sometimes it’ll be men arguing “I’ll get you a new one from Amazon,” or “you’re not a young woman any more, Margaret,” or a “do you _want_ me to look gay?”

These people are different.

They move through the shop with an odd kind of efficiency, scattering and calling to each other when they find something they think will fit. And their clothes truly are filthy: the black girl’s jeans are caked in mud. Pam is sure she can see what looks like sand embedded in the blue t-shirt the curly-haired man is wearing under his overcoat.

“Sorry, guys,” says one of them—the white woman, in a low voice. Her accent might be American, too, but it’s generic enough to almost sound anonymous. “I would’ve got a change of clothes organised if I’d known it was going to be this bad.”

“Don’t worry about it, boss,” says the black girl. “It was our fault, mainly.”

“I should’ve been more on the ball. Sorry, Andy,” says the white guy—now sounding like maybe he might be Italian, or Portuguese? (His eyes are blue, weary, intense.)

“This can wait,” says the curly-haired man. “Not here. We did well, considering.” He’s pulled out a pair of jeans, dark grey with a reflective flash on the side meant for cycling, and looks to the black girl: “Nile, this might be your size. Men’s, but it should do for now.”

She tests them against her legs, keeping them a good few inches away from her own filthy jeans. “A bit long… I guess I can roll them up,” she says. “Thanks, Joe.”

Pam is very glad that her manager is not here. David would probably take one look at the state of the girl’s (Nile’s?) knees and the other woman’s (Andy’s?) muddy boots and ask her not to come in. Pam’s willing to let it slide, as long as they buy something, David’s standards be damned.

“Nicky,” calls Andy(?), and the possibly-Italian guy’s eyes rise above one of the aisle clothes racks. She holds up a t-shirt with a striped, quasi-nautical pattern, probably on-trend around ten years ago. “Thirty-six chest.”

Nicky(?) nods his approval, and brings a thin-looking business shirt to Joe. At this point, he says something in a language Pam doesn’t understand: definitely not Italian. Maybe Turkish? Farsi? Arabic? Pam doesn’t know anything about the languages from that part of the world.

“Grazie, amore mio,” says Joe—something she _does_ understand. His fingers linger in contact with Nicky’s, and they’re sharing a private look, eyes locked. Then he gives what looks like a nervous, or maybe suspicious, glance towards Pam.

She smiles, hoping that will indicate she’s not a threat or a homophobe. Joe (at least, she _thinks_ that was his name?) looks back at the shirt, and says something else in Italian—beyond Pam’s tourist phrasebook vocabulary, now.

This goes on for another five minutes or so. They’re fast, not dawdling, scraping together bits and pieces before corralling their purchases into one basket and leaving Joe(?) to pay for the lot.

“Is this for some kind of challenge?” asks Pam, as she reads the tags on the items one by one, manually punching the price in. £3.99. £2.49. £7.49. This is a big order.

“For what?” the man asks.

“Big group of four of you,” Pam says. “I assumed it was something the students’ union organised? Like a jailbreak?”

The man’s eyebrows (absolutely _massive_ ) crinkle in confusion.

“We’re not students,” he says.

(It’s only now that Pam notices a spot—no, a full-on _stripe_ of dried blood peeking out from underneath the man’s face mask.)

“I see,” Pam replies. “Did something happen?”

“I fell off a groyne and went into the sea,” the man says, clearly noticing where her glance has gone. “It’s nothing.”

“Ouch.” Pam peers through the shop window, at the rainfall outside, and suggests: “Not a great day for a day at the beach.”

“It was for work.”

“Right,” Pam says. She feels like she should carry on making smalltalk now, because she started it, and because she likes to get to know her customers, even if she never learns their name. Who knows? They might even bring some repeat business, and the twenty pounds or so every few months might _just_ help pay for a raincoat or a set of bike lights or a toothbrush for a freshly-arrived refugee.

(But if they’ve come from the coast, and they certainly _sound_ like they’re out of town…)

Pam wonders, as she enters £3.99 for a green hoodie, if she should ask the man where his accent’s from. But that, she decides, would make her sound too much like her boss David, who has a habit of saying things that are insensitive at best and overtly racist at worst. If David were here, he would press the question with ‘where are you _really_ from?’ and then mention Churchill, or if he was drunk, Enoch Powell. (She still does not know how he wound up working for a refugee charity.)

So instead Pam asks: “what kind of work do you do?”

“Work,” the man replies, blankly. (She wonders if she can detect a scowl behind his mask.)

“OK,” she says. “Sorry.”

She finishes scanning, and the total comes to forty-seven pounds and eighty-six pence. The man draws out a wallet, with what looks like a _lot_ of cards (who doesn’t have that many? Loyalty cards, cancelled gym memberships, old driving licences) and picks one seemingly at random.

“Contactless isn’t working,” Pam apologises, taking the card and inserting it into the reader, hoping it won’t lose its connection or drain its battery and that the sticky number 4 key won’t stop working, because they _really_ can’t afford a new one right now. As she disinfects the machine, and the card, her eyes drift to the pre-paid card’s branding, to the name printed above the card number. **MR YUSUF HUSSEIN.**

“Oh,” she says, handing the card machine back to the man she now knows is called Yusuf, or maybe Joe. “My cat’s called Yusuf.”

Yusuf’s eyebrows make ridges on his forehead.

“Oh,” he says. (Pam can tell he’s smiling, but can’t tell if this is polite, or in confusion, or annoyance, or in a gentle moment of recognition.)

“After Cat Stevens,” Pam says.

His eyebrows furrow in confusion again.

“You know. Cat Stevens. The singer. Otherwise known as Yusuf Islam.”

The pun clicks in his head. Or maybe he’s being polite. Maybe Yusuf Islam isn’t big in America, or Holland, or Belgium, or wherever he comes from.

“Right,” he says.

Pam prints Yusuf’s receipt, and puts everything in the bag for him, coming around the counter because it’s so over-stuffed it won’t fit through the slot they’ve used for the baskets and the card machine.

“Thank you, Yusuf,” she says, and then, as Yusuf takes the bag, although she knows it’s wishful thinking, “see you again soon?”

“See you,” Yusuf replies, and smiles with his eyes.

(Even with most of his face obscured, it’s a beautiful smile. If she guessed correctly, and the Italian guy—Nicky?—well, he’s a lucky man. Pam again rues that all the handsome ones turn out to be gay, or already married. Or both. The world has changed.)

The bell on the door chimes as Yusuf swings it open on the way out. There’s a thud of a defective closing mechanism, and another _thud_ —and Pam thinks she sees something moving in the donations box near the front.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It is not until the end of her shift that Pam opens the donations box, and finds no less than eighty fifty-pound notes in a tight wad have been shoved through the slot. Four grand. Four thousand pounds.

She cannot quite believe it. She counts them again. Checks them with the UV light. They’re not counterfeit. She feels them with her hands, tracing her wrinkled fingers over the words. _I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of fifty pounds_. Rubs the Queen’s nose on one, expecting it to disappear.

This is real money, and this… the difference it will make, particularly when there are fascists shooting at boats from the White Cliffs of Dover, and the Home Secretary making noises about sending in the Navy to harass some of the most desperate people on the planet…

Pam lets herself have a good cry to begin with. As she writes up the paying-in slip, her pen hand is shaking. **Four thousand and twenty-nine pounds and fifty-seven pence.** She struggles with texting anyway, but she manages it, just enough to send to David. “This group of customers came in earlier and donated £ 4 kin cash..,” She adds a few sobbing emoji for good measure, because her son’s taught her that how you express really big emotions on an iPhone.

She takes a video as she walks to the bank, and makes sure to get the paying in slip and the volume of the bag as she puts it into the out-of-hours deposits chute. (As evidence, she thinks, in case it ‘goes missing.’ In fact, it’ll appear in _Help the Refugees’_ bank account tomorrow afternoon.)

And then, as Pam wipes her eyes and stops up her tears again as she walks through the town square to the railway station, she hears Italian being spoken.

The sun’s come out, and two men are sitting outside the local artisan coffee place. They’re having a convivial conversation (in Italian) with Luciano, the (Italian) proprietor, as he brings out two espressos. They’re keeping their distance from him, masks off, and smiling, at the barista, at each other.

Pam recognises a shock of curly hair, eyes that look like they could deliver a death glare, and hears a laugh. Nicky(?) wears a crooked smile. He downs the espresso in one swig, and uses another word that Pam recognises: “bello, bello.” Yusuf sips his more tentatively, and grins at Nicky, broadly, toothily. Happy. She spots a few rings on his hand.

They are wearing the clothes they bought in the shop earlier. Yes, it’s not high fashion. But they’re handsome young men, and they pull it off well. The green hoodie brings out Yusuf’s eyes. Nicky has hidden the t-shirt under an overshirt. Yes, it works.

They (well, Yusuf) _did_ leave four grand in the donation box earlier.

Pam does not know quite what to do. Her train is in fifteen minutes. The next one won’t be for another hour or so. She may have to iPlayer _The Repair Shop_ this evening.

But—

She pops on her own face mask, dashes into Asda, and finds a bunch of flowers. Lilies. She could never have them in her house—Yusuf ( _her_ Yusuf) would probably try eating them, the little shit, and lilies are poisonous to cats. A shame. They’re beautiful.

(She wonders if this Yusuf owns a cat. But he seems to travel a lot, with his… boyfriend? Husband? Partner? Probably doesn’t have the time to look after a cat.)

She hovers around the corner, out of sight, for a full three minutes, until she plucks up the courage to walk around the corner, just as the two men are settling up with the barista, Nicky offering a genial “prego, ciao, ciao!” to Luciano.

For a moment, Pam is struck by a singular terror—what if these are not the same people? They are wearing different clothes. And she couldn’t see most of their faces earlier today.

She is about to make an almighty embarrassment of herself, but… _oh, what the hell._

“Excuse me,” she says, and Yusuf stands back for a second—startled. Nicky’s eyes sharpen for a moment into a glare, and he steps forward. Keeping his distance from Pam, but making no bones about it—if she is…

“I just wanted to say thank you,” Pam blurts, and holds the bouquet upright, at arm’s length. Her hands shaking.

The Italian’s eyes look shifty, but Joe’s—he moves forward a pace, rests a hand on Nicky’s elbow, and he’s glazing over a little—

“You know why,” Pam says, and _shit_ , she’s going to cry again, but— “this will make such a difference. You have no idea how kind that was. Thank you. _Thank you._ ”

Joe reaches out, and takes the bouquet from her hands. Nicky’s eyes follow it, scanning it— _inspecting_ it. As if he expects it to be bugged, or contain one of those practical joke squirty things.

Joe’s broken into a massive, massive smile.

“I was a refugee, before,” he says. He glances at Nicky, and then adds: “A long time ago. I’ve been there.”

Pam knows. He gets it. She knows better than to ask where or when, and she couldn’t care less if he’d run from the Arab Spring or the Bosnian War or frankly the sack of Constantinople. He knows, and he recognises it.

“I need to go,” Pam says. “Sorry. Train to catch. I’d hug you if I could. Thank you so much. Bless you. _Bless you._ ”

They glance at each other, as Pam turns and begins a speedmarch to the station, although there’s no way she’ll get there on time—

“Thank you,” comes an Italian-accented voice behind her.

She looks over her shoulder, and sees two warm smiles in the gold light of the autumn sunset.

And then Pam nods, and resumes her walk to the station, stopping up her tears.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Pam does see them, one last time.

It’s the next morning, when she feeds Yusuf ( _her_ Yusuf, because Cat Stevens seemed like a hilarious pun eight years ago when she adopted him) and he purrs contentedly afterwards, before changing his mind and sitting by the back door, mewling, demanding to be let out. So she unlocks the catflap, watches his stripy tail disappear, and then walks to the shops in her slippers. It’s still dark. Barely 6am.

There is something odd she can’t quite put her finger on in the newsagent. Something missing. She buys a Su Doku puzzle book to have something to do while waiting for the train, and a bottle of milk. The newspapers are as awful as she expects. Angry headlines. **HOME SEC: WE’LL STOP THE SWARM OF BOATS. 500+ asylum seekers “yet to be deported.” LIBYAN MIGRANTS TAKE HOMES FROM FAMILIES.**

Sometimes, Pam feels as if she is Sisyphus, doing her little bit to roll the stone up the hill from her position behind the counter at the _Help the Refugees_ shop in Hitchin. She does sign the petitions. She does organise the fundraisers, the bake sales, the coffee mornings. She has ridden her bicycle from London to Brighton and sat in a bathtub of baked beans for sponsorship money. She does her best.

But every day it feels like it’s worth nothing when the world is against her. When she wrote the letter to her local MP—handwritten pages and pages with the story of her mother, and how she came to the UK from Prague via Kindertransport at the outbreak of World War II, she got a pro forma response about the need to protect British jobs for British workers and deliver on the will of the British people to reduce immigration. The newspaper headlines have been vicious for decades, but it’s getting worse. It makes Pam ashamed to be British. Where she comes from, hatred is like gravity, and she is just _tired_ of fighting it.

She realises on the way out that the _Daily Express_ has sold out today. That’s ominous. It’s one of the worst. Its masthead contains a templar knight at the centre with the cross of St. George on his shield. It regularly runs racist petitioning and letter-writing campaigns which it calls “crusades.” The mask is well and truly off, and it has been for decades.

And so Pam is in a foul, dejected mood by the time she gets home, and opens the door to find some early post on her doormat.

This is unusual. No address, stamp, or postmark. Just her name. **Pam** , in big, loopy lettering, on a jiffy bag.

(She should be suspicious. _Help the Refugees’_ shops have been targeted by far-right extremists before. Pam and David once had to wipe a swastika off the front window. It wouldn’t be unheard of—)

Two things fall out once she tears open the envelope. One is a bag of cat treats—a big size, too.

One is a piece of paper. The same loopy lettering on one side.

_You are welcome, Pam. See you soon._

No signature. But on the other side—this looks like it’s been torn out of a sketchbook—

Pam blinks away tears again as she processes what is sketched in pencil on the page. The shaded details of her own face, her glasses, the way her face wrinkles at her jowls, her laugh lines, her smile. He even got the floral blouse she was wearing yesterday, and the text on her name badge. Next to her, just about to scale, is Yusuf (the cat)’s big fluffy face.

She is not quite sure this is real. She rubs her nose, like she rubbed the Queen’s nose on the banknote yesterday. It is real.

She places it in her jewellery box, with reverence, to frame on the wall later. One day, her friend Maryam, on a visit to her house, will not recognise the medieval Tamazight, but _will_ tell her that the Arabic signature ( **يوسف** ) is just _Yusuf. Joseph, if you prefer._

But for now, she’s content to leave it to her suspicions.

She has more suspicions when she watches the breakfast news on BBC1. Pam had written a long, angry complaint in August, after the two mornings in a row when they’d sent cameras out to interview and harass people in tiny boats crossing the Channel. Now, she’s watching them report on how a group of far-right activists with illegal weapons was found dead on the White Cliffs of Dover, and how four boats, carrying fifty-three people—nineteen of them children—made safe landings as a result.

(Yusuf fell off a groyne, Pam thinks. And that girl, Nile(?), no doubt, just decided to roll around in a muddy field.)

When she heads to work, the station is a short, diagonal walk across Clothall Common. Pam fills up her thermos with instant coffee, puts her su doku puzzle book in her handbag, and brings her torch, because although it’s getting light, it’s still dark enough to give her the shivers and make her nervous.

Her adrenaline spikes when she sees what looks like a fire around the corner. This turns to sadness as she realises that the flames, and the smell of smoke and burning wood and paper, are coming from a rubbish bin.

Pam wonders if she should offer her coffee to the four people huddled around the fire.

Then one of the faces looks up, all eyebrows and a wicked grin, as another, hooded and with a pensive stare, stokes the fire with another copy of the _Daily Express._

Suspicions confirmed.

The two women look up, too, Nile and Andy. So does Nicky, and on recognising Pam, his face breaks into that enigmatic smile again.

She offers a silent, smiling nod of understanding. Yusuf returns it.

Pam heads to the station that day, walks to the shop, and opens up the door. Confident, refreshed, ready to take whatever the day will throw at her.

Because there are people who have arrived on England’s shores, cold, hungry, terrified, with no money, and who will need crockery and clothes and bicycles and dried pasta. Because it is the right thing to do. Because all things told, as much as she has to scrimp and save, Pam is comfortable and there are people she intends to help.

And for the first time in a while, Pam knows, in her gut, there are other people on their side.

**Author's Note:**

> The Daily Express is a real newspaper in the UK that really does use a Templar knight on its masthead, calls its campaigns "crusades," and has racist front pages.


End file.
